Apple iPad to dominate tablet market through 2015, Gartner says

Apple’s iPad will continue to dominate the “media tablet” market for years to come, research firm Gartner said on Monday. While Google’s Android platform is expected to gain market share rapidly as iOS’ share declines over the next five years, Gartner still sees iOS as owning the largest share in the tablet market five years from now. According to the firm’s latest figures, Apple’s iPad tablets accounted for 83.9% of the market in 2010 while Android tablets — namely Samsung’s Galaxy Tab — held a 14.2% share. In 2011, Gartner expects the iPad’s market share to slip to 68.7% while Android’s share climbs to 19.9%, and then in 2015, Android will rise to account for 38.6% of the market. At that time, Gartner expects Apple’s iPad to account for 47.1% of the 294 million tablets sold, meaning Gartner expects Apple so sell nearly 140 million iPads in 2015. A few other items of note according to the firm’s forecast: RIM’s QNX-based tablets will make up 10% of media tablets sold in 2015, HP’s webOS will only have a 3% market share in 2015, and the figures in this report do not include sales of Windows-based tablets as they do not fit Gartner’s criteria for “media tablets,” which run a lightweight OS. Hit the break for Gartner’s full press release.

Gartner Says Apple iOS to Dominate the Media Tablet Market Through 2015, Owning More Than Half of It for the Next Three Years

Egham, UK, April 11, 2011—

Despite mounting competition from other operating systems (OSs), Apple’s iOS will continue to own the majority of the worldwide media tablet through 2015, according to Gartner, Inc. Due to the success of Apple’s iPad, iOS will account for 69 percent of media tablet OSs in 2011, and represent 47 percent of the media tablet market in 2015.

Gartner analysts said Apple iPad did to the tablet PC market what the iPhone did to the smartphone market: re-invented it. A media tablet is not just a different form factor to perform the same tasks that can be done on a PC. Tablets deliver a richer experience around content consumption, thanks to the ecosystem they support. The richer the ecosystem, the stronger the pull for consumers.

“Seeing the response from both consumers and enterprises to the iPad, many vendors are trying to compete by first delivering on hardware and then trying to leverage the platform ecosystem,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “Many, however, are making the same mistake that was made in the first response wave to the iPhone, as they are prioritizing hardware features over applications, services and overall user experience. Tablets will be much more dependent on the latter than smartphones have been, and the sooner vendors realize that the better chance they have to compete head-to-head with Apple.”

Google’s Android OS is forecast to increase its worldwide share of the media tablet market from 20 percent in 2011 to 39 percent in 2015 (see Table 1). Analysts said Google’s decision not to open up the Honeycomb, its first OS version dedicated to tablets, to third parties will prevent fragmentation, but it will also slow the price decline and ultimately cap market share.

“Volume will be driven by support from many players, the ecosystem of applications for tablets getting more competitive and some platform flexibility allowing lower price points,” said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner. “The new licensing model Google has introduced with Honeycomb enables Google to drive more control, allowing only optimal tablet implementations that don’t compromise quality of experience. This might mean that prices will drop at a slower pace than what we have seen in the smartphone market.”

Table 1Worldwide Sales of Media Tablets to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

OS

2010

2011

2012

2015

iOS

14,766

47,964

68,670

138,497

Market Share (%)

83.9

68.7

63.5

47.1

Android

2,502

13,898

26,382

113,457

Market Share (%)

14.2

19.9

24.4

38.6

MeeGo

107

788

1,271

3,057

Market Share (%)

0.6

1.1

1.2

1.0

WebOS

0

2,796

4,245

8,886

Market Share (%)

0.0

4.0

3.9

3.0

QNX

0

3,901

7,134

29,496

Market Share (%)

0.0

5.6

6.6

10.0

Other Operating Systems

234

432

510

700

Market Share (%)

1.3

0.6

0.5

0.2

Total Market

17,610

69,780

108,211

294,093

Source: Gartner (April 2011)

With the migration of Blackberry devices to QNX – the OS used on the Blackberry PlayBook – in 2012, RIM will be able to offer users a consistent experience across its whole product portfolio and create a single developer community. While QNX is a strong platform that delivers on performance, graphics and multitasking features,Gartner analysts said success in the media tablet market will be driven by richness of ecosystem.

“It will take time and significant effort for RIM to attract developers and deliver a compelling ecosystem of applications and services around QNX to position it as a viable alternative to Apple or Android. This will limit RIM’s market share growth over the forecast period,” Ms. Milanesi said. “It will be mainly organizations that will be interested in RIM’s tablets because they either already have RIM’s infrastructure deployed or have stringent security requirements.”

Gartner analysts said platforms such as MeeGo and WebOS, which currently have a weak presence in the smartphone market, will have a limited appeal unless they can grow that business.

“Smartphone users will want to buy a tablet that runs the same operating system as their smartphone. This is so that they can share applications across devices as well as for the sense of familiarity the user interfaces will bring,” Ms. Milanesi said. “Vendors developing on Android should be prepared to see more cross brand ownership as some users might put OS over brand when it comes to the purchasing decision. Improvements on usability and brand recognition are the strongest differentiators they can focus on.”

A media tablet is a device based on a touchscreen display (typically with a multitouch interface) whose primary focus is the consumption of media. The devices have screens with a diagonal dimension that is over 5 inches and may include screens that are as large as is practical for handheld use, roughly up to 15 inches. The media tablet runs a lightweight OS such as Android and iOS that is more limited than, or a subset of, the traditional fully featured OS such as Windows.

Has anyone ever gone back and check Gartner predictions for accuracy? I’ve always found them overly optimistic and slanted toward tremendous growth for whatever industry they cover.

I also think forecasting tablets 4 years out is stupid. Could Gartner have predicted the iPad 4 years ago? No. So why bother going out 4 years today. People love the magic quadrants, but I find little value in this type of forecasting.

Anonymous

“Analysts said Google’s decision not to open up the Honeycomb, its first OS version dedicated to tablets, to third parties will prevent fragmentation, but it will also slow the price decline and ultimately cap market share.”

This is what they are basing this on?? HAHAHAHA

We shall see huh?

Yea another “analyst” guessing…

Anonymous

Was going to make the same comment.

Google held it back because the OS is obviously inefficient and unstable – my Xoom chugs along to do many things my Thunderbolt performs effortlessly, not to mention the FCs. Most of this is possibly due to rushing to beat the iPad 2 to market.

They’ll release 3.x source code when they are confident that the user experience is much better than before.

MyPhoneCaptivates

Not if my pocketbook has anything to do with it. Eventually the price of the Xoom will be lowered.

Anonymous

138,497 thousands of units. Not 130,000 or 140,000 thousands. 138,497 thousands. This precision is laughable at best.

RealDeal

I like how losing 35% marketshare over 5 years is somehow considered ‘dominating’. Nice spin BGR.

http://twitter.com/livingbasehead Shelton

when the nearest competitor has 10% 35% is dominating.

Anonymous

The Fandroids will pray (in futility, alas) for buy-one-get-one-free deals on Android tablets to help propel their market share numbers, as they did in the mobile phone space.

Actually, the way the early Android tablets are selling, they may see some buy-one-get-one-free deals after all. Just to empty the warehouses.

Anonymous

Or…maybe we’ll pray for BOGO deals because we want more devices for less money?

http://twitter.com/Poita316 Peter Fox

Spoken like a true iFan :)
But then again, you’d like to buy 2 almost similar devices with upgrades that are jaw dropping *caugh*

Anonymous

“But then again, you’d like to buy 2 almost similar devices with upgrades that are jaw dropping *caugh*”

Too bad your OS of choice doesn’t have built-in spell check. :P

http://twitter.com/Poita316 Peter Fox

It does.
But seeing that English isn’t my native language it doesn’t check for it in English…
Ah well, just put an o were the a is.

Anonymous

Really “analyst?” Go to google and search “Product Life Cycle.”

Pretty easy to make these assumptions.

Tomm

I wonder if they predicted that Symbian today would be the leading mobile OS 4 years ago? You can’t predict that far out that leaves too much time for another company to completely change the market.

Steve

They did in fact predict this, in 2009.

Booboolala2000

People want more from a tablet than just an oversized app launcher. They will be comparing them to laptops by the end of next year. The price is where it is, and will be there for a while. Apple needs to revamp their os if they want keep the lead they have. Where Honeycomb and Chrome os Tablet rum more like a computer, which is what people are really looking for. And get with the cloud apple.

Anonymous

Yep. Go tell it to the 10 mil plus who have already bought iPads. Ever think that maybe people like them because they’re NOT just like PCs?

http://twitter.com/Poita316 Peter Fox

Predictions in a market which is just over a year old with only 1 dominant player? Come on!
But then again, these guys tell us WM will runt the OS market in that same year.

Anonymous

I predict that Apple will stilll be the single biggest vendor of Tablets, but Android devices will outnumber iOS devices.

http://twitter.com/Poita316 Peter Fox

As they do in the mobile phone market in the US?
I read it’s the most sold / used OS and not Apple.

Anonymous

That’s what i’m basing my Prediction on. While the iPad is a solid device, once 10 other manufacturers come into the picture, they;ll have a hard time keeping that strong a hold.

Anonymous

How much cash will Apple have on hand after it sells 140 million iPad5s in 2015? Apple with $100 billion in cash has got to terrify would-be competitors in the space.

http://twitter.com/jesterthejedi Billy Butler

I think this projection is dead wrong in many areas. My numbers are in million units.

First Android, and Samsung for 2010 did not “sell” they only stocked 2.5 million units, I revise the totals for last year as with their portion being 1/10 the sell number.
iOS 14.7(96%), Android .25(1.6%), and others .24(1.5%); total 15.28
I also do not share the numbers for QNX or WebOS to grow so dramatically as they are unproven. We have only seen thus far iOS being successful, and we need to assume that not everyone will have great matching success in this market. my 2011 projection is:
iOS 40(94%), Android 1(2.3%), QNX .5(1.2%), WebOS .25(.5%), others .5(1.2%); total 42.25

I wont attempt to project farther than this as anyone that claims to project that far ahead is behaving rather silly and presumptuous for believing things always stay the same. I also don’t agree that sales will be as aggressive in the coming years, yes more will be made, but maybe not in as high volumes. I really don’t see anyone else taking off or owning the market, and the myth of an iPad killer will linger this year but not really hold up.

Sinani201

“Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’”